Darkness
written by: Emma Wells
“But I saw him bury you.”
He stalks as a lost signal amidst God-reaching towers of metallic forgetfulness. They bend, cowering, in slight intrigue at his passing above their regal rooting. Anchoring roots of skyscrapers are symbols of security amidst urbanity and its unpredictably soaring prices and ever-changing faces of economy.
As dusk twirls in rhythmic formations into a tighter darkness, a cloak of repression fastens tightly as straitjacket buckles and binding corset loops. At each flinch of fear, its clasps surround stealthily like a desperate lover in feral need of affection – desiring blind kisses of adoration. A looked-for sticking place to hang trickling ribbons of tenderness upon within the gnarled iron ore heart of the metropolis and its relentlessly turning cogs.
He brushes past the rubble-stained walls, with their flecks of poignant, ruby dust, highlighting and be-speckling his sleeve as he passes along the narrow inlet of human thoroughfare. The wall’s coarse touch bristles the internal fibres of his sage tweed jacket, forcing corded twine to surrender in quaking intimidation. An unseen, silent battle is set in motion, betwixt mankind and urbanity.
Spirited skylines morph to rivulets of nocturnal satin: maroon laces of silk entwine with metallic ribbons of night, forming an alliance as lovers. At the break of dawn, both will stand assuredly, holding a blossoming new love in ghostly, whispery hands. Their holding on mirroring the sturdy grasp of the city: its marriage ring of silver enshrouds the London horizon as it tents newly betrothed night, tightly encircling its upstanding skyscraper fingers. The moonlight blinks a tear in benediction of such a union, blushing in magenta blotches as a proud priest.
The single wanderer deepens his lost gaze, refocusing upon iridescent puddles: petrol emissions fuse with natural rainfall. An oxymoron floats in car view mirrors as urbanised, angelic halos are set ablaze by strengthening streetlights that dimmer and beam in moody, intermittent channels. Each illuminating puddle of reflection is a sacred shard of light as a baby’s longed-for smile in the midst of motherly tiredness, rejuvenating her domestic world.
Ravens, harbingers of damning corruption, frolic on forming midnight skies and windowsills as delinquent pupils seeking a revolt from stifling school and its held doors: fabricating themselves free from perceived prisons of the mind. Cawing calls of uplift resound between the Georgian townhouses as the midnight wanderer is bewitched by their gothic glossiness: starlight bedazzles their sable feathers with a glittery mist. Beautiful, elusive creatures who scan the city beneath them as gargoyles protecting Notre Dame.
Curiously, a single raven extends its feather-tips in mockery of the man’s tunnelled existence. A display of its winged liberty is a toppled Christian cross of hope, exposing the inhabitants’ collective, thwarted vision – stunted by boardroom meetings, urgent scribblings, and overexposing tube lighting, cast above their duping commercial heads as interrogative police rooms.
Contrarily, the man strides onwards after a demanding office day, allowing his consciousness to unravel, becoming more purposeful; he seeks a higher plateau, espying Londoners’ lives. Confidence swelling, he wishes to abstain from trampling along flat, backstreet passes – horizontally predictable as a teacher’s ruled lines in a formulaic exercise book. He longs for an upward-looking release.
He craves more in life. Desperation drips from a clenched need within him as desire from spilling, wilful hearts eager to fall in love.
Skyward horizons draw his macabre intrigue. He spotlights a single star, willing himself to forge as smelt iron amidst its flowing, honey rivers. He longs for a new life, escaping the narrow inlets of London living with its crushingly extortionate prices and box-shaped rooms.
He saunters on, ghostly elusive as a hushed, transitory whisper.
Spellbound by darkness and its elusive freedom.
Buried.
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